The True Value of Talent Acquisition to Your Company

In the past, talent acquisition professionals were viewed as internal consultants. If an urgent position became vacant, C-level executives looked to these teams to “take care of it.” What did this mean for recruiters and HR leaders? In many cases, the expectation was that they would post job listings online, find a few candidates, and hire the right person for the job within a matter of days.

Of course, this is an incredibly reductive view of the work that your team does, especially when it comes to hiring developers. But how can HR leaders communicate the full value of their talent acquisition strategies to their executives? Here are a few points to keep in mind.

It Impacts Your Company’s Overall Reputation

There’s no denying that your employer branding strategy can impact your developer hiring. Last year, Lee Jones at Trivago told us that his team was able to double their engagement and application numbers through their creative branding campaigns, all within a matter of months. This campaign had an undeniable impact on Trivago’s reputation in the developer community. But does your approach to talent acquisition also affect your company’s overall reputation?

We posed this question to James Milligan, Technology Director for Hays Digital. It didn’t take long for him to confirm our suspicions. “If a hiring strategy is not correct and roles are not filled, an organization’s reputation can be put on the line,” Milligan says.

However, Milligan doesn’t suggest starting conversations with executives on this note. “At Hays, we establish ourselves as the experts in finding talent,” he continues. “If we come across challenging feedback, we make it a priority to communicate with diplomacy, using a more consultative approach.”

Unfilled Roles Can Lead to Lost Profits

Recently, we looked at the costs of an unfilled technical role, which are currently estimated to be upwards of $500 per day. This estimate was based largely on lost productivity, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact, companies that don’t take tech recruiting seriously also risk losing profits.

In its 2018 High-Impact Talent Acquisition study, Bersin by Deloitte found that “high-maturity” talent acquisition functions bring in 18 percent more revenue than their lower-maturity counterparts. Additionally, high-performing recruiting teams bring in 30 percent more revenue per employee, on average. That begs the question: What are the most common characteristics of these “high-maturity” teams?

Bersin’s report calls out traits such as the ability to build workforces through business integration, recognizing existing employees as a strategic resource, and constructing a personalized candidate journey. If these look familiar, it’s likely because developers frequently highlight them as things that they consider in new jobs and employers. HR leaders that apply these things to their developer hiring strategy not only put their companies in a stronger position to recruit technical talent, but they also can make a significant impact on the entire organization’s financial health.

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Rich is a Content Marketing Writer at Stack Overflow, where he covers the latest in tech recruiting and developer engagement. When he's not writing, Rich can be found hanging with his wife, watching his favorite college football team with his dad, or running around Manhattan in preparation for his next marathon.